Canada must treat young killers gently, court says

OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canadian courts must treat juvenile
killers more leniently than adults unless the government can
show compelling reasons to give them adult sentences, the
Supreme Court of Canada ruled on Friday.

The high court said adolescents have "diminished moral
culpability" and should not have to prove that they should be
given youth sentences. In each instance, the onus will now be
on prosecutors to make the case that adult sentences should be
applied.

"Young people are entitled to a presumption of diminished
moral culpability," Justice Rosalie Abella wrote for the
court's 5-4 majority decision. "Young people...are decidedly
but differently accountable."

The case involved a 17-year-old, identified as D.B., who
sought to pick a fight with 18-year-old Jonathan Romero outside
a mall. Romero did not defend himself, but D.B. knocked him
unconscious and Romero died of his injuries.

The 17-year-old was convicted of manslaughter and given a
youth sentence of 30 months in a juvenile correctional facility
plus six months' supervision.

The prosecution had sought an adult sentence of five years'
imprisonment. But the lower court ruled unconstitutional the
section of the Youth Criminal Justice Act that said adult
sentences should be given for manslaughter and murder unless
young offenders show otherwise.

The government appealed and lost, both at the Ontario Court
of Appeal and now at the Supreme Court of Canada. The case will
not be reopened.

Justice Marshall Rothstein, writing the dissent, disagreed
that the section of the Youth Criminal Justice Act was
unconstitutional, noting that under it young offenders still
had the right to satisfy the court that adult sentences should
not apply.

The question of how to treat young offenders has also
emerged in the case of Omar Khadr, the only Canadian being held
by the United States at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

He is charged with having thrown a grenade that killed a
U.S. soldier in Afghanistan in 2002, when he was 15. A range of
critics say he should be treated as a child soldier rather than
tried as an adult.